Lighting a choir

I have two Nikon SB910 flashes + D7000

 

How do I position them to take a group choir picture of about 50 in a church?

 

Do I have to use umbrellas or are the diffusers that come with the flash enough?

 

What angle should they be as well?

Hi Paul, you asked pretty much the same question about 4 years ago: Group shots with D7000

 

How did it go last time? It may be helpful if you can post an image of the current setting, e.g. how far is the choir from you, are there audiences around so that your camera position is restricted, other lights available ....

I'm absolutely not a flash expert, but I'll say that I've tried to light moderate crowds at formal dinners, and tried to recover images taken by others, and there's a big problem with the light fall-off with distance from the front to the back. If you're not able to get people roughly the same distance away (and with 50 it may not be so bad if you can arrange, say, three tiers) I'd say you might want to bracket exposure and stack the results (which also means you can cope with someone who has their eyes closed) - or at least use the lowest ISO you possibly can for recovering in post. This also means you can focus stack, which can be useful if people are covering a far enough range and you're at a moderate aperture to let the light in. If it's a smallish church, ceiling bouncing might work - otherwise I'd almost say forget the flashes, rely on the fairly even (if dark) church lighting, and hope for the best. Getting up high (shooting from the organ loft, for example) can help.

 

But I may be overestimating the problem if you have a relatively small group of people and can wrangle them into a close formation.

 

As Shun says, some idea of distance (perhaps which lens you have in mind) might help. Otherwise, I'm sure there'll be something on the strobist sites.

 

Good luck with it, anyway.

The wedding forum have some threads over the years where this problem has been discussed, but there has been less activity in recent years. You may want to do a search.

 

50 people are tough to light in a large, dark venue. If you don’t want to get umbrellas and stands, you could try to place the two lights on either side of the group (to your left and right) and point both flashes towards the opposite side of the group and above their heads. So the flash to your left side would be pointed towards the area above the heads of the right hand side of the group, and the flash to your right would be pointed above the heads of the left hand side of the choir. Use umbrellas if you can. I would set the speedlights to M1/4 and then meter or test the ISO and aperture to use for correct exposure. Shutter speed can be selected to let in some ambient light.

 

But: if the space you are shooting in is dark and large, the pop up probably cannot trigger the flashes. And this means you need a radio trigger and receiver or two.

 

You could rent battery powered studio flashes for this if available.

How do I position them to take a group choir picture of about 50 in a church?

This makes me believe you will not be shooting while they are performing. If you are free to arrange them, a low-tech-stress-free way would be to just use existing light in the church. Layer the group and make sure everyone looks at you and you can see everyone. A stairwell makes a good composition if there's one. Then raise your ISO to just below D7000's noise tolerance threshold with f/5.6 or f/8. Tell them to be still and shoot from a tripod. Then adjust your shot with the shadows/highlight level. If there is daylight, go outside.

 

Also believe you can use one flash TTL to good effect if the group is not far-spread out. Soften flash with a Gary Fong thingy or something. Personally I like to use a Magmod MagSphere or MagBounce.

Edited February 9, 2018 by Mary Doo

Multiple flash can be tricky.

If you are not careful, you will put people in shadows. Been there, done that :(

 

Get a bunch of people to "simulate" the choir and shoot test shots.

Then go from there. But hopefully with a plan, rather than unplanned experimentation.

This is how you learn, by experience.

Having done a number of large groups, 50 to maybe 200 I think the easiest and most effective way is to get a couple of studio lights and some boxes or umbrellas. You can rent them or maybe borrow them. Those SB flashes won't do the job for groups of much size.

 

Rick H.

a couple of studio lights and some boxes or umbrellas.

Very good idea when one does this on a routine basis. Unless you are looking for professional build quality, they can be surprisingly inexpensive.

You need one studio flash (300 or more joules) with an umbrella, placed at least 3' above the camera to avoid red-eye. It's better to use two lights about 8' apart and high to eliminate shadows on the rows behind. Use radio remotes. Stand on a ladder so that the camera is about level with the center row faces. I usually profile the stage with an incident light flash meter, triggering the flash from the meter. You can shoot from a balcony if it's not too high (so you're not looking at the tops of their heads). If each member can see you with two eyes, you can see their faces.

 

I use tall stands, ranging from 13' to 27', usually extended half way or so for stability, with "lazy legs" to level them on slanted auditorium floors.

 

If you do this a lot, it's a good idea to have a wireless com system and an assistant to work on stage. That's de rigeur for sound and video setups too.

I've never been happy with group photos using a collection of camera flashes.

 

I agree with the last few comments-either rent or buy a basic 2-3 light studio set-up. If you rent, get it far enough ahead of time to play with it.

 

I like Ed's suggestion(I'd dare say he has a lot more experience than me) of using a pair of lights up high. I'd go with a big(36" or larger) umbrella. I generally like shoot throughs, but silver might be better in terms of efficiency to get light out to a big group.

 

If the ceiling is white, I'd also be tempted to put a 3rd strobe lowish at the back with a reflector firing straight up. I'd want to play with this for sure to make sure nothing unintended happened, but this can help fill in any residual shadows.

My first recourse would be to "reccy" the venue and see if bouncing is a possibility. A cream or off-white surface is OK when using digital, since a custom balance can take care of any flash tint.

 

Even tall ceilings aren't too much of a problem provided you're willing to push the ISO up to 800 or so.

 

A quick calc. Your two SB-910s combined will have a real GN of 80 (in metres) at 400 ISO. So a 'round trip' bounce distance - less reflection loss - will give you around f/5.6 with a ceiling height of 4 or 5 metres. Pretty doable.

 

Alternatively: Putting the flashes into white 4ft umbrellas and using high clam shell lighting (10ft stands) should give you reasonably even coverage. You could set the flashes about 5 metres from the group and use maybe f/8 @ 400 ISO.

 

Silver brollies would be more efficient, but the light from those can be a bit patchy and needs more careful setup.

 

Incidentally, there's very little point in using brollies much larger than 4ft diameter with speedlights. The spread of light from a speedlight won't fill a larger brolly, and its extra area is just wasted.

 

I wouldn't rely on TTL metering or AWL (optical triggering). Put the flashes on full manual power and buy a set of cheap radio triggers - YongNuo RF603s for example. TTL doesn't work too well when the flash is 'maxed out', and optical triggering is just too unreliable.

Edited February 10, 2018 by rodeo_joe|1

For what it's worth, when I've seen trouble, it's been more because the subjects are different distances from the flash than because of side-to-side variation, since you can spread the flashes out horizontally (a bit). Being above them helps (because of the angle). But I've often taken or seen shots where the depth of the crowd was at least 2-3 times the distance from the front people to the flashes, so you'd expect fall-off; the farther away you can get (or fake it with a bounce) and the closer in depth the crowd is, the less of a problem this would be. With the flash a long way away, I'm not sure how much of a difference a diffuser will make, because it's still a relatively small angle relative to the subject - so I'd be worried about the loss of absolute light level compared with a bare flash. Smoosh everyone up and my concerns probably go away.

 

But I can only speak for how I've got this wrong in the past. I trust others here to know what they're doing far more!

Bouncing light in a large room can work, theoretically, but I haven't had much luck with it. Roughly speaking, you must be as far from the subject as you are from the ceiling. In a large venue, that can be a challenge to achieve. Even then, you need a lot of power or use high ISO. I find it more productive to use flash as fill light, to open up shadows, while relying on space or stage lighting to a large extent. The least challenging situation is in a modern stage setup with a shell, which helps distribute light throughout the stage. The most challenging is an older school auditorium using dark curtains in the wings and as a backdrop. Since most of my subjects are wearing black, faces in the back become disembodied, glowing orbs. There is no easy solution. If I find one, I'll publish ;)

The biggest issue to overcome is shadows on faces, or faces hidden behind someone else. You have to check each face and have people adjust their position. Take a number of shots so you can clone in a face if you mess up. The little Nikon SB flash can do the job, but you'll need about four of them, radio triggers, and at least 8 ft. lightstands. The light needs to come from slightly above, to help throw shadows down.

 

 

Kent in SD

(Thinking outside the soft box...) So, all in all, go during daylight and take a photo of the choir standing outside the church. Much easier and cheaper for everyone involved, and probably better representative of the church. Would that work?